Tie Fighters are a symbol of the Empire in the movies : the distinctive noise, and the inevitable death of its pilot, spinning after losing a wing, or failing to dodge an asteroid.

Tomorrow, the Tie Fighter Pilot will join the ranks of the empire characters available for Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. You want to collect this guy, because he's part of the symbol. Moreover, with ships coming to the game, well, having pilots seems legit.

Thanks to some datamining, we have raw information about this character. Let's take a look !

Abilities package

The TIE Fighter Pilot is an attacker. For the abilities details, I let you check swgoh.gg (cf. link on the name).

In a few words, he is :

A glasscanon, low HP, nice damage and an Area of Effect ability (AoE : hitting all ennemies)

Fast, sharing the fastest base speed from the game with Rey and Princess Leia

A decent support character : his AoE has 80% chance to inflit buff immunity. That's important with the current state of the game, more on that later on. He can block abilities to his main target too. Powerful...

Interesting stats

Potency

Fully maxed, without mod, the TIE Fighter Pilot has 51% potency. He's ranked 4th at the time of writing.
That means that his debuffs have very good chances of landing. Being fast, he can really mess with the opponents team from the beginning of the fight, while boosting his damage and survivability.

Speed

As stated above, he's one of the 3 characters with a base speed of 164. With mods around, he can become really fast.

Defensive stats : glass-level

30% tenacity, 10% health steal : that's average.
Low HP (10,319), Low Protection (9,922) : he will be targeted early on by the opponent's team...
You'll need tanks to use him correctly

Personal synergies

The TIE Fighter Pilot reveals an interesting "burst damage" synergy :

an AOE that inflicts Debuff to the whole team, and block abilities for his main target (sorry ST Han, no taunt... Too bad Lando, you'll have to wait a little before calling your red-lazer-rain)

He can gain turn meter for every enemy debuffed at the end of his turn... 5x 10%, half a turn meter after the very first turn. Being fast, he'll play quickly again

He has 35% chance per enemy debuffed to gain foresight. You need 3 debuffed enemy to be protected from one attack.

His base attack deals 35% more damage for each debuffed enemies.

This one deserves an entire paragraph

Each. Debuffed. Enemies. Worth it ?

The TIE Fighter Pilot hit with his basic within a range of 3,859 to 4,265, maxed without mods. That's an average of 4,062.

Stick to the plan : you AoE the ennemy's team.
Thanks to your potency, they're all debuffed.
Now comes the next turn, let's shoot somebody.

Darth Vader

As a leader : 30% offense and 10% turn meter when damaging an ennemy. Nice : more damage, and turn meter options on the AoE ability

Synergy level : worth testing !

General Veers

AoE with ability block : debuff for the basic atack

As a leader : 30% offense (hey, that means we can reach 20K on crits for a full debuffed team ! That's the same with Vader by the way)

and that's all... Veers can gain bonuses for himself, mostly if enemies are dying. That can be useful in Galactic War, but not really in arena...

Synergy level : for fun only

Other non leaders

Royal Guard

He stuns : that's a debuff, and an opponent that cannot hurt your team. And he can protect the pilot with his surprise taunts !Teammate Synergy level : good buddy

Shoretrooper

He taunts. He taunts right from the start. Even before the battle starts. He taunts in the morning. He taunts at night, he taunts in the afternoon. When he taunts he makes TIE Fighter Pilot feel all right. He taunts in time of peace, and taunts in time of war. He taunts before he taunts ! And then he taunts once more.
He inflicts a single target debuff, and has a lot of health, which is nice when taunting.Teammate Synergy level : good buddy

Magmatrooper

Snowtrooper

No debuffs, no taunt. If a unit is defeated, grants 15% turn meter to allies. Chances are that the dead unit will be the TIE Fighter Pilot.Teammate Synergy level : very low

Stormtrooper

He taunts ! But he's slow...
If the Stormtrooper can trigger his taunt before the TIE Fighter Pilot is focused, that's a relief.
However most arena teams are including a character able to dispel. This dispels aims to remove any taunt in the way of damage dealers.Teammate Synergy level : low

Sun Fac : interesting, but requires a heavy wallet. Out of the scope of this article

Conclusion

The Empire lacks character of this kind. The kind which can deal massive damage.
Everyone played Rey and/or Princess Leia because there were not many replacements. It's hard to say if he will share their spot.

With the release of Emperor Palpatine, and more Darth Vader shards available, he totally fits in an Empire squad. Bring the Royal Guard, and the ShoreTrooper or Grand Moff Tarkin, and you can start something. I'm pretty sure we'll see this guy in arena teams (as soon as he becomes farmable that is).

Thanks to Lizsen (from the official forum), and Ivan_Ivanov_Ivansky (from reddit) for your input, I missed a lot there !